Name: Butter
Ingredients: pure cream; milk; previous day's buttermilk (1 tablespoon per 1.5 liters of milk)

Why it works: Cream and buttermilk work together. They rank in the top 10% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 674 recipes. Both carry ethanol, which smells alcoholic, ethereal. The science ↓

Butter

Ingredients

pure cream
milk
previous day's buttermilk (1 tablespoon per 1.5 liters of milk)

Directions

Mix pure cream and milk together.
Add 1 tablespoon of previous day's buttermilk for every 1.5 liters of milk.
Optionally, smoke the inside of the container to enhance flavor.
Chill and store the butter in a cool place.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

Cream + buttermilktop 10% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together674 recipes

Shared aroma: ethanol (alcoholic, ethereal).
Cream + milktop 18% of all pairs

Smell alikemoderate

Cooked together29,399 recipes

Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).
Milk + buttermilktop 41% of all pairs

Smell alikelow

Cooked together9 recipes

Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).